Crain’s Chicago’s Best Places to Work 2020

Looking over this year’s Best Places to Work winners, it’s hard not to get nostalgic for the office, pre-COVID. Talk of tricked-out breakrooms, birthday celebrations, impromptu happy hours and rooftop decks has us pining for the days of interacting in real life with co-workers.Today, most of us are still working from home, unsure when office life (or any part of life) will be back to normal. It will happen, of course, and when it does, these companies are showing the way: providing employees with the perks, amenities, pay and benefits that keep them happy and productive.

A record 14,522 employees participated in our survey about their workplaces this year, well before the virus took hold. Read more about the top companies in three categories—large, medium and small.

Centro was named the 25th Best Places to Work in 2020 by Crain’s Chicago Business. Among our benefits cited were our 401K match, and unlimited PTO. Here is the full list in the URL below. I’m sure other ITA member companies are on the list too.

To see the entire list of companies, visit the original post here.

In 25 words or less, what is Karat all about?

Karat’s mission is to make every interview predictive, fair, and enjoyable. This lets engineering leaders make quality hires, reduce bias, and deliver exceptional candidate experiences.

What problem do you solve and how do you solve it better than the competition?

Software engineers are essential for business growth. But, most interview processes tax engineering productivity, fail to achieve diversity and inclusion goals, miss hiring targets, and produce new hires that don’t meet technical expectations. This often occurs when companies lack the time and/or expertise to conduct the interviews needed, creating what we call an “Interview Gap.”

Karat is the only company that offers remote, human interviews for software engineers at scale. In terms of competition, clients usually bring us in to either fix their internal process, or to replace some kind of automated code test that is usually riddled with inconsistency, cheating, bias, or poor sign-up rates.

What makes Karat stand out?

The human touch! Being a human-centered company is key to creating enjoyable interview experiences for candidates. I love the empathy we have across our company–from top to bottom. It would be easy to treat job candidates like numbers, but then we’d be no different from the automated code tests that we’re replacing.

How did you get started?

Our co-founders, Mohit Bhende and Jeffrey Spector, were both approaching the problem of interviewing from different sides.

Mo was a product strategy leader at Xbox and couldn’t find the engineering time to interview enough candidates to fill his open roles. They had an Interview Gap! So Mo ended up hiring a bunch of retired Microsoft engineers to conduct the team’s interviews. At Karat, we used a similar approach to professionalize the interviewer role. Now we have a global community of dedicated Interview Engineers.

Jeff was the Chief of Staff to Melinda Gates at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They were conducting research on how people get jobs, and how interviews are such a critical moment in peoples’ lives. The empathy behind that led Karat to treat interview candidates like customers. So we built an unbelievable network of customer experience managers and a top of the line coding/interview studio to make sure our candidates are as comfortable as possible and ready to highlight their strengths as engineers.

And that’s how Interview Engineering was born.

What are the biggest challenges you face as you scale your business?

One early challenge we faced as we expanded into different industries was learning how to align our interviews and results with each company’s unique hiring bar. Karat ended up inventing an entirely new discipline called Alignment Engineering.

The team is led by Shannon Hogue. Shannon is a Chicago-transplant living in San Francisco (but you can still catch her accent slip on the occasional video, it’s amazing). Shannon’s team goes into each enterprise account, meets with the engineering leaders, reviews job descriptions, identifies the competencies that hiring managers need to assess, and works with our content team to develop interview formats and questions that match the client’s needs.

We’re also able to use the data and feedback from onsite interviews and hiring decisions to refine our questions and hiring bars over time, so as our clients’ teams improve and mature, their interviews grow with them!

What’s the number one thing on your to-do list?

We’ve been talking a lot about fairness over the last few months. It’s really heartening to see so many business leaders making commitments to change, and we realize that as a company that sits at this pivotal moment in peoples’ lives and careers–the interview–there is a lot that Karat can, and must, do to help improve diversity in tech.

Earlier this summer, Karat shared our commitment to the Black community. One of the things that our partnerships and research have taught us, is that people get better with interviews the more they practice. But at the same time, less than 40% of computer science students who graduated from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, have exposure to technical interviews before entering the job market.

So last month we kicked off a $1 million practice interview initiative that is designed to make sure the engineers coming out of HBCUs are coming into their first job interviews on equal footing with the kids coming out of traditional top-10 CS schools. 

What’s the coolest perk Karat’s office has?

That it’s empty!

We were actually getting ready to open up a big new headquarters in March, but as COVID-19 hit, our leadership team didn’t hesitate to pull people back from the field and go to an all-remote culture.

We got to tour the office once as a company back in February as we were getting ready for it to open. It looked amazing, so I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision. But really do live our core principles, so instead of moving in, Karat added a bunch of WFH benefits to help employees set up our home offices, and here we are for the foreseeable future.

It will be nice to see people again, though…I miss all the dogs (we’re pet-friendly) and the group lunches!

What motivates your employees to come to work every day?

Technical interviews are broken. And we get to fix them!

Also, I love how quickly we are able to help drive results. Not only with our clients by saving them tons of time and money, and helping them hire quality engineers, but also with the candidate experiences. We have a feedback loop where every candidate has the opportunity to review their interview experience, and some of the responses there are really incredible to see–even from candidates who didn’t perform particularly well on their first try.

It’s so rewarding to see how quickly we are able to make a difference from both a material, and human standpoint.

What is the one thing Karat cannot live without?

We pretty much live on Slack. For better or worse. Sometimes worse. For instance, I’m not looking forward to seeing how many DMs I have after this interview!

What are the growth and scaling opportunities within Karat’s industry?

I love that question! Honestly, it feels like we’re barely scratching the surface. To date, we’ve conducted 70,000 technical interviews for companies hiring software engineers, but it’s easy to imagine the concept of Interview Engineering expanding to other roles, other industries, and other geographies.

What’s most exciting for me is that our mission isn’t to make every “technical” interview predictive, fair, and enjoyable–it’s to make every interview predictive, fair, and enjoyable. We’re changing the way every company interviews!

UI Health, Chicago Medical Society and PhysIQ Collaborate to Protect Frontline COVID-19 Health Care Workers and High-Risk Patients with Advanced AI

CHICAGO, IL – June 16, 2020 – The University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System (UI Health), Chicago Medical Society and AI healthcare tech pioneer physIQ announced today that physIQ’s pinpointIQTM continuous remote patient monitoring (cRPM) system will monitor the vital signs of the health system’s frontline health care workers and high-risk patients with COVID-19 for early signs of disease exacerbation. 

The pinpointIQ system is an FDA-cleared AI analytics platform that monitors the vital signs through a wearable biosensor detecting changes in physiologic indices of health status.  The system then notifies clinicians charged with monitoring data produced by pinpointIQ for clinically-relevant changes in vital signs. This allows an early plan of care to be developed that may prevent complications or hospitalization.

“Our top priority is protecting and promoting the health and safety of our patients and staff, and COVID-19 has created an urgent need for innovative, tech-driven solutions,” said UIC’s Dr. Terry Vanden Hoek, Chief Medical Officer at UI Health and Head of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the College of Medicine. “We are excited to partner with the Chicago Medical Society and physIQ to offer home monitoring options to some patients and staff with COVID-19 that could help us detect physiologic changes of illness progression that may indicate a need for early follow up with their physician.”

Through this collaboration, the University of Illinois Hospital will have access to the technology and monitor certain staff and patients with COVID-19 with risk factors such as obesity and heart or lung conditions and who are isolating at home. “Continuous monitoring of patients using physiological modeling with AI offers an opportunity to detect a virus exacerbation early. Early intervention may prevent the body from initiating the ‘cytokine storm’ that we think causes the most severe complications of COVID-19,” Vanden Hoek said. “We hope this technology will help us to closely follow the health of our staff – in partnership with their primary care providers – and patients while they are at home with COVID-19.”

The potential utility of pinpointIQTM for use with COVID-19 patients is supported by the work physIQ has done with USAID, the CDC and Scripps Health in patients with Ebola, as well as in clinical studies conducted with Veterans Affairs in patients with severe congestive heart failure. 

The pinpointIQ system comprises a Vital Connect wearable biosensor, pulse oximeter and smartphone streaming of physiological data to a HIPAA compliant cloud-based server, which uses FDA-cleared analytics to produce clinically actionable insight. For homebound UI Health patients, the system will be prescribed by an emergency room physician and shipped directly to the patient’s home without requiring direct physical contact from a clinician. For health care workers who choose to participate, the system will be deployed at the hospital, through UI Health’s employee health program.

“To make a life-changing impact, we need to be at the front line of health care,” noted Gary Conkright, CEO of physIQ. “We are proud to support homebound healthcare workers and patients who are high risk for COVID-19 exacerbation with our remote physiologic monitoring technology.  This opportunity also allows physIQ to support UI Health in its mission to reduce and eliminate the health disparities experienced by vulnerable communities, which have recently seen disproportionate rates of COVID-19 infection and death due to COVID-19 complications.”

“PhysIQ is alone in offering deep analytics and AI to monitor the health of patients and their healthcare providers,” said Ted Kanellakes, Executive Director for the Chicago Medical Society. “The Chicago Medical Society is proud to support this important collaboration. As a provider to underserved communities, UI Health and physIQ together will make a real difference to the people of Chicago.”

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Staying connected while remotely can be tough. But that doesn’t mean creative collaboration has to stop.

For the last several months, Forte Group, a Chicago-based custom software services company, has published a series of videos called Forte Connect. Forte Connect is a series of conversations with business and technology leaders to share ideas, collaborate, and stay connected.

“Working in technology allows us to share ideas with a lot of really smart, insightful people,” C.J. Montano, Partner and Managing Director at Forte Group, said. “When we started working remotely in early March, we wanted to keep those conversations going, even if they were now over Zoom calls. We decided to call it Forte Connect because we wanted to stay connected and share ideas with technology industry thought leaders. It’s been a really enjoyable and educational experience.”

Here’s the latest episode, where members of the Forte panel speak with digital transformation expert, Amit Ainapure. Amit, who is also a business agility coach and Director of Program Management at TIAA, shares his thoughts on how organizations should reprioritize their key initiatives–including digital transformation–in 2020.

https://fortegrp.com/digital-transformation-2020/

On the page, you can also check out each of the seven recordings the Forte Connect team has published since March. Topics include remote work and employee engagement strategies, how technology is helping the supply chain, how to maintain product vision through challenging times, and more.

Interested in participating in an episode of Forte Connect? You can reach out to their team at news@fortegrp.com.

As companies expand their search for top talent and remote work becomes more widespread, many technology teams end up with colleagues working all over the map. The best ideas stem from communication and collaboration among individuals with diverse backgrounds and skillsets. But how do we support a culture of new ideas when our teams aren’t physically all in the same place?

We’ve faced this challenge at CSC Corptax®. We have a large remote workforce, and we’ve taken steps to make teamwork and communication part of our values and culture. To further support innovation, we also embrace career ownership and team members raising their hands to take on new challenges.

Ryan McCullagh a CSC Corptax software engineer since 2017, says the company has found ways to make remote work, well, work. “Groups are never isolated, and we’re encouraged to reach out within and outside our teams for support. We use Microsoft Teams® so anyone can feel free to communicate with any other developer or team,” he says.

CSC Corptax’s culture of sharing knowledge includes everyone, Ryan says, and management is very approachable. “No one is intimidating. You never feel uncomfortable reaching out to a person just because they’re not on your team.”

The relationship between the software and product teams are also different than what can be found in other companies. Typically, one team will gather requirements which are sent to the software developers for implementation. “At CSC Corptax, we have a dedicated Product Team that can provide direction to software developers when there’s a new feature that needs to be implemented or other enhancements to the core product. The Product Team is a huge resource and benefit that makes sure our software is delivered on time and as expected,” Ryan says.

CSC Corptax software engineers spend most of their time coding, but a good amount of research is also necessary. Ryan has learned so much about CSC Corptax systems and code, he’s become a resource for other developers. “We have a lot of code and every team member can’t know every part of the code. With the experience I’ve gained learning our systems and code, I can share my knowledge with colleagues and new hires,” he says.

New hires at CSC Corptax aren’t expected to know everything that comes their way either. “We document everything, so when a new member joins the team, they get a document that tells them exactly how to set up their computer to run our code,” says Ryan, adding that new hires are encouraged to make notes and enhance the document so that the next person has an updated version.

The new team members are also encouraged to ask questions, which is part of the CSC Corptax culture of teamwork and collaboration. “When people ask the right questions, they can learn a lot faster and not get stuck spinning their wheels when another team member might have an answer,” he says.

Since CSC Corptax has been around for more than 45 years, there are processes in place for code reviews and coding standards. This benefits new team members so they pick things up faster. It also benefits the work-life balance for all the teams.  “All of our code goes to code reviews so we can catch bugs before they make it to production. This means I’m not up at 3 a.m. trying to fix something,” Ryan says.

Everyone, from new hires to those firmly established in their careers, should volunteer for projects at work. “Have an open mind when it comes to working in new areas. This applies to me at CSC Corptax, but also for any project, team, or company you work for,” he says.

CSC Corptax is fortunate to have a history of remote employees and teams being successful. For others, this change in working environment is a drastic shift, one we don’t see ending anytime soon. It all comes down to a culture of open communication that runs throughout the organization. When people know they’re free to ask questions and collaborate with others to solve a problem, good things happen.

MxD team

Each year, Connected World compiles nominations that are submitted by industry and researched by the editorial team. The Women of Technology entries are judged by a panel of past winners who determine the new winners based on established criteria including involvement with technology, how each individual has helped a company prosper and progress, how she has contributed to the growth of technology, and how she has mentored other women and goes above and beyond to support other women in business, technology, transformation, and her local community.

This year, MxD CEO Chandra Brown was named a 2020 Woman of Technology/IoT.

Read more here.

MxD is excited to announce the release of several open project calls. We invite you to review the requests for proposals (RFPs) on several subjects including cybersecurity assessment, emerging technology and cyber research, and supply chain risk management.

If you have questions regarding any of the projects below, please send your questions to the MxD Projects Team at projects@mxdusa.org.

20-11 Emerging Technologies in Manufacturing and Cybersecurity Research in Manufacturing – Deadline to submit is September 3, 2020 – View RFP here

20-05 Achieving Resilience through Proactive Supply Chain Risk Management – Deadline to submit is October 15, 2020 – View RFP here

What is Basis Assistant?

In an industry based on collaboration, Basis Assistant is a unique tool that will improve the way digital marketing teams work. Basis Assistant facilitates knowledge sharing across teams by simplifying and automating the logging of all campaign changes and updates.

A Knowledge Sharing Tool for Every Campaign

Take a quick product tour of Basis Assistant and see how it can begin working for you today.

To learn more and to request info/watch the video, click here!

We asked eight professional women in Chicago tech what has helped them overcome fears or doubts that accompany advocating for themselves in a typically male-dominated space. 

Many of their initial responses? They haven’t. 

“I don’t actually think I’ve resolved that fear,” Bounteous’s Visual Designer Allison Catuira said. “It’s both a personal struggle and a systemic byproduct of the misogyny that is baked into the fabric of most workplaces and society,” she added. 

For Catuira, as well as Neighborhoods.com engineer Megan Lyle and Fetch Rewards engineer Glenda Adams, self-advocacy is an ongoing process. 

That said, they and other women suggested a few strategies for staying true to themselves and fighting for what they deserve. For example, they lean on both personal and workplace allies for support and keep an ongoing list of accomplishments with quantifiable outcomes handy to share with higher-ups when appropriate.

“Sharing achievements isn’t tantamount to arrogance,” Haley Altman, global director of business development and strategy at Litera Microsystems, said. 

SnapSheet:“What did I learn and what can I take with me to my next endeavor?”

It’s one of a few questions that Manager of Strategy and Implementation Stephanie Acker asks herself after finishing a project or volunteering for an assignment. The Snapsheet team member said she’s learned to speak positively and proudly about her accomplishments from mentors and peers alike. 

How have you gotten past any fears or doubts about advocating for and promoting yourself, your accomplishments and your abilities?

For me, the first step was realizing that advocating for yourself doesn’t mean that you are arrogant or entitled. It means that you deserve to be seen and have recognition for what you’ve accomplished. Men are much more normalized to talking about the value and insight that they bring to the table, simply because they’ve been brought up to think and talk that way about their accomplishments.

I started my career at a large professional services firm. I was fortunate enough to have both male and female mentors who provided me with guidance and support to feel like I could speak confidently about my own abilities. The biggest (and simplest) thing that helped me was practice. I check in with myself after every opportunity I’m pursuing and ask myself a few questions: What did I learn and what can I take with me to my next endeavor? What would I do differently when faced with a similar situation in the future? How has this helped me progress and grow as an individual and a professional?

To the women who are nervous about the perception that comes with self-advocating: use your previous experiences, understand what you’ve learned from them and where you want to go, and be confident that you have the background and knowledge to get there.

What advice do you have for women who may feel like their contributions are being overlooked in the workplace?

If you feel like your contributions are being overlooked in the workplace, take a step back and ask yourself why.

Diagnosing the reason you may be feeling overlooked will help you come to a solution. If it’s because no one knows the work that you’re doing, then you probably need to start advocating for yourself and strategically building your network. If it’s because other people on your team are quicker to speak up, then challenge yourself to contribute more frequently and take the lead. If it’s because a teammate or superior takes credit for your work, have a conversation with them. Ensure they aren’t the only person who knows the work you’ve been doing. If you do identify that what you’ve been working on isn’t adding value toward your company’s goals and objectives, then switch gears. Find an area where your company does need help and be the go-to person to solve that problem or close that deal.

Share an example of a time when self-advocacy paid off. 

I recently wanted to get involved with an opportunity that sits outside of my current role. I knew that I had the appropriate skill set and knowledge to assist with the effort, so I started meeting with a number of different team members and C-suite executives to understand our overall objectives and action plan for the opportunity. Based on my previous experience and leveraging my existing network, I was able to establish myself as a go-to person for questions and assistance, even though it wasn’t part of my normal day-to-day.

In this specific situation, I did face opposition in the beginning from different team members, since it was technically outside of my normal responsibilities. You have to be willing to accept push back sometimes to make a little progress. Creating conflict or addressing confrontation is not for everyone. However, if it’s for the right reason and moves you toward the greater good, I’ve learned it’s worth having a few difficult discussions.

View Snapsheet’s profile here!

Tech companies across the United States are reexamining their values and recommitting their programming, hiring and products to be more inclusive of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) in light of the recent protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism spurred by the killings of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor and other Black people. In addition to reflection, this is also a moment of action, one that asks companies to acknowledge where their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are lacking and strengthen them.

According to the numbers, companies don’t have to look very hard to find areas of improvement. Black tech workers make up less than 5 percent of employees at Salesforce, Facebook, Slack and Microsoft and less than 10 percent of employees at Twitter, Uber and Lyft. A study by San Jose State University, which used anonymized data provided by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, found that 10 large Silicon Valley tech companies employ no Black women and that three large Silicon Valley companies employ no Black people at all. 

These stats lay bare just how much work the tech industry has to do to become more inclusive. We have a better idea of what that work entails after talking with leaders at Relativity, Ball Aerospace, Compass and Livongo. For these companies, inclusivity isn’t just an internal initiative but one that extends to their communities via student mentorship programs, fellowships for talent typically overlooked by the tech industry and pledge programs designed to drive investment toward Black professionals.

CASSANDRA BLACKBURN, HEAD OF INCLUSION, DIVERSITY & BELONGING AT RELATIVITY

When it comes to diversity, equity and inclusivity, where does Relativity have the most room for improvement?

Relativity is committed to building awareness across the organization through education.  Right now, we are driving learning and introspection through monthly events and by offering educational resources. In our view, the more educated we are, the better we can drive change. 

A few example sessions that we have held in recent months include a panel conversation in partnership with The Nova Collective discussing the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color and an internal panel discussion on the ways that allies shape the LGBTQIA+ experience and the intersectionality of our individual journeys. We also offer resources, coaching and support in understanding what it means to be an ally to our Black Relativian community and how to take action.

We plan to build upon these educational opportunities and continue diversifying our talent pipeline by partnering with diverse professional groups and universities to maximize the high performance of our teams. Relativity partners with various organizations across the country and in the Chicagoland area, including National Black MBA Association, Society of Women Engineers, National Society of Black Engineers and Latinas in Tech. However, we acknowledge there will always be room for improvement and are dedicated to learning and growing to foster a more inclusive workplace.

What is your organization doing to promote inclusivity in the tech community?

Our Social Impact program aims to build inclusivity within the broader tech community. We believe education is at the core of inclusive environments because when we know more, we do better. 

Over the years,  Relativity has committed $2.92 million in direct financial and in-kind donations to local public schools and nonprofits. Our Wired to Learn program enables local public schools to purchase the technology they need to close the opportunity divide for low-income students who otherwise may not have access to things like computers or calculators. Our monthly Geek Grants are awarded to educational or technological organizations working to make technology more accessible and STEM careers more inclusive. 

Additionally, this summer we are kicking off the Relativity Fellows program, which will feature 10 to 12 fellows in its inaugural cohort. The Relativity Fellows program aims to expand economic opportunity in the Chicagoland area by finding, certifying and employing untapped talent in traditionally overlooked communities. By the end of the program, all fellows will be certified on our software and ready for placement in a full-time position with Relativity, our partners or our customers. 

Check out Relativity here!

Running out of cash is one of the biggest risks to an organization, and COVID-19 has pushed many businesses right up to, if not past, their liquidity limits. Strategies for managing cash flow go well beyond focusing on income and expenses. To manage cash flow well you also need to look at the three liquidity hotspots: customer management, inventory management, and vendor management.

Here are several key liquidity improvement steps you can prioritize to manage each hotspot. Some can be done quickly to keep you from running out of cash in the short term. Others will improve your liquidity management overall, helping you enhance your strategic positioning, increase your efficiency, and reduce operating risks. Improvements you make now will not only help your business survive the crisis now, they’ll help you thrive in the future, making this a tremendous learning opportunity.   

90% of engineering leaders agree that “software engineers are more valuable than capital.” But despite that premium value, just 50% of engineering leaders are “very satisfied” with the performance of their engineering teams.

In the 2020 Interview Gap report, Karat explores how COVID-19 has changed the developer hiring landscape and looks at what the most successful companies are doing to accelerate hiring by making their interviews more predictive, fair, and enjoyable. 

Read the full report: http://go.karat.com/Software_Engineering_2020_Interview_Gap

Tech, catering and design companies are rushing to sell employers on fever scanners, box lunches and office floor-planning apps for social distancing. But it’s too soon to tell if they will work.

Truework, an income verification start-up, recently introduced software to help employers keep track of their workers’ health status.

Gensler, an architecture and design firm, has a workplace floor-planning app that generates social-distancing layouts for desks and other office furniture.

PwC, the professional services firm, is using technology that it originally developed to track inventory for a newcontact-tracing system that logs employee interactions so workers can be notified in the event of exposure to the coronavirus.

With companies pressing to figure out how to safely reopen workplaces, makers of everything from office furniture to smart ventilation systems are rushing to sell them products and services marketed as solutions. Some companies, like makers of thermal cameras that sense skin temperature, are rebranding their wares as virus-containment fever-scanning products. Others are creating entirely new services.

And they have a captive market. To protect employees and reduce liability for virus outbreaks at work, companies are racing to comply with public health guidelines on issues like employee screening and social distancing. In the United States, the market for contact-tracing technologies for employers could soon be worth $4 billion annually, according to estimates from International Data Corporation, a market research firm.

But the preventive tools and pandemic workplace rules are so new — as is the emerging science on the virus — that it is too soon to tell how well, or if, they work.

“These are all untested theories and methods right now,” said Laura Becker, a research manager focusing on employee experience at I.D.C. “What is going to be the most effective component of all of these work force return strategies? We don’t know.”

The Lobby

When workers eventually return to the office, they may find that the lobby resembles an airport security checkpoint. At least that’s the vision that Kastle Systems, a 48-year-old Falls Church, Va., company that designs, installs and monitors security systems for several thousand commercial buildings, recently began marketing to its clients.

Businesses that use the company’s coronavirus management system, KastleSafeSpaces , may ask employees to download an app that will automatically open entrance doors for people eligible to come to the office. Workers who fill out a health screening questionnaire ahead of time may proceed to a lobby fast lane to have their temperatures checked. Those who have been asked to stay home because they recently tested positive for coronavirus may go on a kind of no-fly list and find that doors will automatically stay closed for them.

“The idea is really to create this profile where you can identify who is known safe, who’s known not safe and then who needs to be screened when they get in,” said Mark D. Ein , the chairman of Kastle. “It’s a little bit like airports where you have Clear precheck or regular check, depending on people’s profile.”

Clear, the biometric identification company known for its air-traveler identification service, recently introduced a system called Health Pass  for office buildings, restaurants, retailers, cruise ships and sports arenas. It will use facial recognition to confirm employees’ identities and vet worker-provided health information — such as symptom data and verified test results — so they can be cleared to enter workplaces. Caryn Seidman-Becker, Clear’s chief executive, said this kind of multilayered approach to entry screening could help reduce risk for employers and create a safer working environment.

Read the full article here!

In August of 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed two new federal laws – Kari’s Law and the Ray Baum’s Act. In our two-part guide to these recent laws and their impact on multi-line telephone systems (MLTS), we’ll look at the following:

• Definition of Kari’s Law
• Story behind Kari’s Law
• Goal and Meaning of Kari’s Law
• Implementation impacts on MLTS

In today’s Part 1, we’ll be examining Kari’s Law. In Part 2, we will examine the RAY BAUM’s Act.

What Is Kari’s Law? Explanation And Definition From The FCC

At its core, Kari’s Law puts a Federal mandate on an assumption many individuals may have already had: no matter where you are, dialing 9-1-1 will connect you to the emergency number. 

In facilities using multi-line telephone systems – such as motels and most businesses – callers have to enter a prefix or access code, typically ‘9’, before entering in an outbound call. In the heartbreaking tragedy that led to the resolution, a child who had learned about calling 911 for help in school was unable to do so in an emergency due to this requisite. 

From the FCC notification:

“Kari’s Law requires direct 911 dialing and notification capabilities in multi-line telephone systems (MLTS), which are typically found in enterprises such as office buildings, campuses, and hotels.

Under the statute and the Commission’s rules, MLTS manufacturers and vendors must pre-configure these systems to support direct dialing of 911—that is, to enable the user to dial 911 without having to dial any prefix or access code, such as the number 9.” (emphasis added)

Kari’s Law Requirements:

• All MLTS phone systems must allow callers to reach 911 with no prefix required. (911 not 9-911 or 8-911).
• A Notification of the emergency call must be made to another location or party with the fact that a 911 call has been made, a valid callback number, and the caller’s location as conveyed to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP / 911 Center).

While older systems are exempt from the law, it is unclear how system updates impact the reach of the law on updated systems…

To read the full article, click here!